---
title: "Dev Workflow Series — Auto-Generate Release Notes with PowerShell + git log"
description: "Use PowerShell with git log to automatically extract commit history between two tags and generate versioned release notes — no more manual writing."
canonical_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/post/auto-generate-release-note"
author: "Mark Ku"
author_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku"
site: "Mark Ku's Tech Notes"
date_published: "2021-04-15 15:01:35 +0800"
category: "PowerShell"
tags: ["release-notes", "powershell", "git", "automation", "devops"]
language: "en"
license: "CC BY 4.0"
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
attribution: "when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original"
---

# Dev Workflow Series — Auto-Generate Release Notes with PowerShell + git log

## Dev Workflow Series — No More Manual Release Notes, Use PowerShell + git log

## The Problem
When a feature is finished and ready to deploy to the next environment, we usually have to "manually log" what changed, so if the next environment hits an issue, we can quickly trace it back to a release. To let developers stay focused on dev, I built a PowerShell automation script that creates a Git tag and produces the Release Note.

## Current Versioning Scheme
Trigger CI/CD via git tag to build automatically.<br/>
b-3.0.1 => b-3.0.2 <br/>
`b` is the beta environment, `3.0` is the major version, the last digit is the minor version.

## Before Writing the Script — Get Familiar with Git Commands

### Find all commit logs between two tags

```
git log --pretty="%s (%h - %an)" "b-0.0.1..b-0.0.2" | grep -i -E '(bug|feature|support|study|task|design) #[0-9]+ '
```
P.S. You can append filter conditions to find matching logs.


### Find the previous version tag in the Beta environment

```
git describe --tags --abbrev=0 --match  "b-[0-9]*
```

## Gotcha — running `git log` in PowerShell shows garbled Chinese

1. Git's default encoding is UTF-8, but our commit messages need to be set to big5 via git config.

```
git config --global core.quotepath false 
git config --global gui.encoding big5
git config --global i18n.commit.encoding big5
git config --global i18n.logoutputencoding big5 
```

2. On English-locale OS, you need to go to Control Panel > Administrative > Region and adjust the language encoding.
![Windows Region Settings dialog showing Traditional Chinese language encoding](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/auto-generate-release-note/images/Vu3IXL0.webp)

P.S. You can also use the `chcp 950` command to test whether the OS supports big5 encoding.

## Execution Screenshots
1. On run, the script shows the previous Beta version and asks you to enter the new Beta version
![PowerShell script showing previous Git version and prompting for new tag](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/auto-generate-release-note/images/V7efvh1.webp)

2. After completion
![PowerShell console showing git log and successful release note generation](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/auto-generate-release-note/images/KMrK3bT.webp)

3. Result
The Git log commit messages are auto-prepended to the Release Note
![Notepad displaying auto-generated release notes from git log commits](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/auto-generate-release-note/images/GmQSU5P.webp)


## Auto generate release note script

I originally wrote this with DOS commands and it was painful. After a colleague's suggestion I switched to PowerShell — the code is much cleaner and saves a lot of time and effort.

```
git config --global core.quotepath false 
git config --global gui.encoding big5
git config --global i18n.commit.encoding big5
git config --global i18n.logoutputencoding big5 
$OutputEncoding = New-Object -typename System.Text.UTF8Encoding

$lastVersion = git describe --tags --abbrev=0 --match  "b-[0-9]*"
Write-Host "Last Version $lastVersion"

$newTag = Read-Host 'Please Enter New Git Tag Name. EX:b-3.0.48  '
# $lastVersion = Read-Host 'Please Enter lastVersion  '


# $newTag= "b-3.0.1"
# $lastVersion = git describe --tags --abbrev=0 --match  "b-[0-9]*"
Write-Host "$lastVersion "
git tag -f $newTag
$fullVersionNo = $newTag.Split("-")[1]
$versionCharArray =$fullVersionNo.Split(".")


$bigVersion = ($versionCharArray[0],$versionCharArray[1]) -join "."
Write-Host $bigVersion

[string[]]$lines = git log --pretty="%n|%h|%ai|%s" "$lastVersion..$newTag"
$datetimeNow = Get-Date -Format "dddd MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm K"
$owner = git config user.name
$newReleaseNote = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList

# $newReleaseNote.Add("$lastVersion - $newTag")

$newReleaseNote.Add("Date: $datetimeNow")
$newReleaseNote.Add("Version: $fullVersionNo")
$newReleaseNote.Add("Owner: $owner")
$newReleaseNote.Add("")
$newReleaseNote.Add("Feature:")
foreach ($line in $lines) {
     $line = $line.Trim()
	 # $newReleaseNote.Add("$line")
     if ([String]::IsNullOrEmpty($line)) {
       continue
     }
     else
	 {
	 $Matches = $line.Split("|")
       $hash = $Matches[1]
       $datetime = $Matches[2]
       $subject = $Matches[3]
	   $newReleaseNote.Add("$datetime : $subject")
	   Write-Host "$hash / $datetime / $subject"
     }
     
 }
$newReleaseNote.Add("")
$newReleaseNote.Add("===================================")

@($newReleaseNote) +  (Get-Content -Encoding utf8  "./ReleaseNote/ChangeLog/$bigVersion.txt")  | Set-Content -Encoding utf8  "./ReleaseNote/ChangeLog/$bigVersion.txt"  

Write-Host "ReleaseNote 產生成功"

git config --global gui.encoding utf8
git config --global i18n.commit.encoding utf8
git config --global i18n.logoutputencoding utf8

```

---

## About this article and its author

Originally published on [Mark Ku's Tech Notes](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/post/auto-generate-release-note)

License: [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original

### About the author

**[Mark Ku](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku)** — Software Solution Provider

- 10+ years senior software engineer, now an AI Builder
- Focused on large-platform architecture — North-American e-commerce, AI SaaS subscription billing
- Combining AI Agents and automation to build evolvable product foundations

### Free tools built by the author

All of these are free to use:

- [Free PDF Sign Tool](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/pdf-sign): Online PDF sign tool — draw, type, or upload a signature, then drag, resize, and download. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
- [VS Code Refactory](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/refactory): Refactory is a VS Code refactoring extension: 34 actions plus a 37-rule code-smell inspection layer with a Code Health dashboard, across 18 languages, backed by 534 tests. It learns your repo's conventions: where interfaces live, where DI is registered, whether 'use client' belongs. It ranks files by git churn × complexity so you know what to fix first, and hands any smell to the Claude Code already on your machine. Free to use, and your source never leaves your computer.
- [DB-Kit Database Manager](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/db-kit): DB-Kit is a lightweight, cross-platform database manager built with Tauri + Rust + React. Manage MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, SQLite, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, Elasticsearch and RabbitMQ from one consistent interface: passwords encrypted in the OS keychain, SSH tunnels, full CRUD, a visual query builder, stacked multi-statement result sets, cross-connection data transfer and compare/sync, Excel / CSV import & export, visualized execution plans, ER diagrams, scheduled backups, SQL stress testing with p50–p99 latency percentiles, a 15-rule SQL review engine, Kafka message browsing with monitoring & alerts, a bilingual UI (Traditional Chinese / English), a built-in AI assistant (natural-language SQL, AI review and tuning advice) and the dbk CLI. Free and open source (MIT), with installers for Windows, macOS and Linux.
- [VS Code Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/super-mermaid): Super Mermaid is a VS Code extension for beautiful Mermaid diagrams out of the box: auto-colored live preview, mouse pan & zoom, high-res PNG / SVG export, 21 templates and multiple themes. Free and open source (MIT).
- [React Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/react-super-mermaid): react-super-mermaid is an open-source React component library: render beautiful Mermaid diagrams with a single <MermaidViewer>, with built-in colorful / sketch themes, pan & zoom, in-diagram search, and high-res SVG / PNG export. Lightweight, SSR-safe, fully typed. Free and open source (MIT).
- [Jira / Confluence Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/jira-super-mermaid): An Atlassian Forge app: write Mermaid syntax directly inside a Jira issue or a Confluence page and get flowcharts, sequence diagrams, state machines and Gantt charts. 11 diagram types, SVG / PNG export, light and dark themes, full CJK support. Runs on Atlassian: your diagrams live in your own site and the app calls no third-party service. Free, coming soon to the Atlassian Marketplace.
- [Mermaid Live Preview](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/mermaid-preview): Write Mermaid in your browser, see it render instantly, and share the whole diagram as a single link. No sign-up, nothing uploaded to a server, and mermaid.live share links work as-is.
- [React Intl Phone Number](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/react-intl-phone-number): react-intl-phone-number is an open-source React component: framework-agnostic and antd-free, with E.164 in/out, a searchable flag / country-code dropdown, configurable validation levels (strict / mobile-strict / loose), themeable CSS, and i18n — phone logic powered by google-libphonenumber. Lightweight and fully typed. Free and open source (MIT).
- [Uptime Kuma Cluster](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/uptime-kuma-cluster): Turn single-node Uptime Kuma into a highly available cluster: OpenResty + Lua smart load balancing, shared MariaDB state, health checks and automatic failover, plus cluster-management REST APIs. One Docker Compose command to start. Free and open source (MIT).
- [Special Education](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/education): Learning materials crafted for special education students

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